It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Presumably we can improve our military capabilities significantly by just buying a metric-tonne of whatever the latest Ukrainian drone technology is at the end of this war?
Not really. The drones Ukraine uses this month are improvements on those they used last month. It's all in a state of rapid evolution, somewhat analogous to the use of airplanes in WWI, except much larger scale and subject much more rapid change.
It's the domestic manufacturing capacity which we would do with building.
Aside from the issues with drones as a concept, there isa small fly in the ointment.
The cheap components for drones - motors etc - all come from China, or similar.
So if something goes wrong with imports, no drones.
So if you want a sovereign drone capability, you need either a vast stockpile of all the likely bits. Or a manufacturing capability for them.
Well, yes. Certainly Europe should have that capacity, and we should aim to be part of that.
The reality is that there isn't a vast amount the UK can do, purely on its own, in the technologies and industry essential to the future. But there's absolutely no reason Europe should not have sovereign capacity in everything from raw materials mining and production to advanced chip manufacturing and reusable space launch.
A sovereign capability on making small *cheap* electric motors is probably not sexy, though.
Or *cheap* compact, low power computer boards.
Or *cheap* small, light video cameras.
Edit: On space launch, the biggest problem is political. For decades, Government policy has been to support ESA/Ariane, and make sure that no UK firm attempts to compete with them. Variously small launcher schemes are given some minor support, but any attempt look at even the medium class is er... shot down.
Sovereign capacity doesn't mean autarky, but it does mean having sufficient capacity not to be held to ransom, as (for example) China has been able to do with rare earths (and might be about to do with solar) where they have an 80 or 90% market share.
Well, if your military capability depends on manufacturing 10,000 drones a day, *to be expended within the week* , you are going to need 40,000 electric motors a day to be able to fight
This is very different from most modern military planning - where even the ammunition is expensive and slow to make. Ammunition production is always the first target for cuts, because it isn't an obvious political point. And people say "If we have the weapon system, the ammunition can always be bought later".
I read yesterday that Patriot missile production is 50-60 per month, but each missile takes two years. It’s like they’re building aeroplanes. They can’t ramp up quickly, despite demand for thousands of them from the Mid East and Ukraine.
What amazes me about all this is that there wasn't a plan in a drawer on how to scale up production rapidly. Frankly Patriot is useless if it's not possible to produce enough interceptor missiles to shoot down China's capability to produce missiles.
The battle of the Atlantic in WW2 was won because the Americans could build ships far faster than the Germans could sink them. Capacity and numbers always count more than anything else.
In our ever more technological focus on ever more expensive kit resulting in quite embarrassingly small numbers actually making it into production we had completely lost sight of that. Cheap as chips drones are a reminder of the realities of war. Changing from the most sophisticated and technologically advanced drone/missile in the world to 10k of them a week requires a major mindset change.
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
I had a great time in Russia when I was there for the World Cup and would love to go back to see some more of the sights. Being a Russophile doesn't mean being a Putinophile!
Russia's flaw is to be a country obsessed with the decline of its empire and also with its moment of glory in WW2. Very much a mirror to a certain country on the opposite end of Europe.
My wife and I have the Trans-Siberian Express on our lifetime bucket list. The hope is that Russia becomes a friendly country by the time we retire.
Sadly this looks some way off at the moment.
A former boss did the trans-Siberian railway. From his account, I'd recommend changing your bucket list. It's a day's entertainment spread over a week. Russia is a big place and there is an awful lot of nothing in between the interesting parts.
Something to be said for living on a small island.
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
I would like to see Carns as the future, but since his resignation yesterday he has said the square of SFA on anything of any worth.
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
And that’s my concern with the defence review - we probably need to spend more money but the Ukraine war has changed how wars work and we currently seem to be planning to fight an historic one from before drones
Presumably we can improve our military capabilities significantly by just buying a metric-tonne of whatever the latest Ukrainian drone technology is at the end of this war?
Not really. The drones Ukraine uses this month are improvements on those they used last month. It's all in a state of rapid evolution, somewhat analogous to the use of airplanes in WWI, except much larger scale and subject much more rapid change.
It's the domestic manufacturing capacity which we would do with building.
Aside from the issues with drones as a concept, there isa small fly in the ointment.
The cheap components for drones - motors etc - all come from China, or similar.
So if something goes wrong with imports, no drones.
So if you want a sovereign drone capability, you need either a vast stockpile of all the likely bits. Or a manufacturing capability for them.
Well, yes. Certainly Europe should have that capacity, and we should aim to be part of that.
The reality is that there isn't a vast amount the UK can do, purely on its own, in the technologies and industry essential to the future. But there's absolutely no reason Europe should not have sovereign capacity in everything from raw materials mining and production to advanced chip manufacturing and reusable space launch.
A sovereign capability on making small *cheap* electric motors is probably not sexy, though.
Or *cheap* compact, low power computer boards.
Or *cheap* small, light video cameras.
Edit: On space launch, the biggest problem is political. For decades, Government policy has been to support ESA/Ariane, and make sure that no UK firm attempts to compete with them. Variously small launcher schemes are given some minor support, but any attempt look at even the medium class is er... shot down.
Sovereign capacity doesn't mean autarky, but it does mean having sufficient capacity not to be held to ransom, as (for example) China has been able to do with rare earths (and might be about to do with solar) where they have an 80 or 90% market share.
Well, if your military capability depends on manufacturing 10,000 drones a day, *to be expended within the week* , you are going to need 40,000 electric motors a day to be able to fight
This is very different from most modern military planning - where even the ammunition is expensive and slow to make. Ammunition production is always the first target for cuts, because it isn't an obvious political point. And people say "If we have the weapon system, the ammunition can always be bought later".
I read yesterday that Patriot missile production is 50-60 per month, but each missile takes two years. It’s like they’re building aeroplanes. They can’t ramp up quickly, despite demand for thousands of them from the Mid East and Ukraine.
What amazes me about all this is that there wasn't a plan in a drawer on how to scale up production rapidly. Frankly Patriot is useless if it's not possible to produce enough interceptor missiles to shoot down China's capability to produce missiles.
The battle of the Atlantic in WW2 was won because the Americans could build ships far faster than the Germans could sink them. Capacity and numbers always count more than anything else.
In our ever more technological focus on ever more expensive kit resulting in quite embarrassingly small numbers actually making it into production we had completely lost sight of that. Cheap as chips drones are a reminder of the realities of war. Changing from the most sophisticated and technologically advanced drone/missile in the world to 10k of them a week requires a major mindset change.
The short story "Superiority" - Arthur C. Clarke, 1951
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
Coding? Doesn't he know that AI will soon render that vocation as obsolete as leech collecting?
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
The obvious counterpoint is No Ind compared to last time.
Local factors, there are always local factors.
Yes, we should focus on this one single result and ignore the the results of the May locals.
You and I campaigned for David Cameron, and I campaigned for the conservatives from the 1964 GE so I do not understand your animosity towards the conservative party of today so maybe it is fair to ask what do you want the conservative party to represent other than pro EU which is not on their agenda ?
You voted for Blair twice.
I want a fiscally sound, socially liberal policies, the rhetoric out of the mouths of Katie Lam and Nick Philip are the language out of Farage, the Tories will not win trying to out Reform Reform.
There's an emerging consensus that equality laws are illiberal and counter-productive. It doesn't make any sense for the Tories to swim against the tide just because the Cameron government was responsible for a lot of it.
It wasn't on the bus but we're talking Brexit benefit here. We have evolved massively in the last decade or so - a real step change in fact - therefore we can leave matters of racial and gender equality to people's commonsense.
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
Coding? Doesn't he know that AI will soon render that vocation as obsolete as leech collecting?
Ah yes. Vibe coding will work. Just as it's done for Microsoft.
In the real world, LLMs can code as a team of juniors working for an overseeing developer.
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
If the future is an AI/ cyber war and engagement is by drones flown by a spotty Herbert in Brize Norton why are we still looking at purchasing vulnerable billion pounds Naval and Air Force assets which could be blown out of the sky/water by a $1000 drone outfit?
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
If the future is an AI/ cyber war and engagement is by drones flown by a spotty Herbert in Brize Norton why are we still looking at purchasing vulnerable billion pounds Naval and Air Force assets which could be blown out of the sky/water by a $1000 drone outfit?
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
If the future is an AI/ cyber war and engagement is by drones flown by a spotty Herbert in Brize Norton why are we still looking at purchasing vulnerable billion pounds Naval and Air Force assets which could be blown out of the sky/water by a $1000 drone outfit?
Ego.
My aircraft carrier/ willy* is bigger than yours?
* We already know that is not true for Donald Trump.
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
If the future is an AI/ cyber war and engagement is by drones flown by a spotty Herbert in Brize Norton why are we still looking at purchasing vulnerable billion pounds Naval and Air Force assets which could be blown out of the sky/water by a $1000 drone outfit?
The problem with that assumption is that drones can't reach high into the sky or deep underwater or far out to sea. If they do, they become rather more expensive - missiles or submarines or long range aircraft.
What will you do when your opponent fire a ballistic missile at you?
I had a great time in Russia when I was there for the World Cup and would love to go back to see some more of the sights. Being a Russophile doesn't mean being a Putinophile!
Russia's flaw is to be a country obsessed with the decline of its empire and also with its moment of glory in WW2. Very much a mirror to a certain country on the opposite end of Europe.
My wife and I have the Trans-Siberian Express on our lifetime bucket list. The hope is that Russia becomes a friendly country by the time we retire.
Sadly this looks some way off at the moment.
A former boss did the trans-Siberian railway. From his account, I'd recommend changing your bucket list. It's a day's entertainment spread over a week. Russia is a big place and there is an awful lot of nothing in between the interesting parts.
Has Foxy done the Canadian transcontinental ? It appears more civilised.
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
Which is, apparently, sacred.
So was I. Personally as a regular visitor to the Northern part of the Emerald Isle I wouldn't dick about with the GFA either.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
If the future is an AI/ cyber war and engagement is by drones flown by a spotty Herbert in Brize Norton why are we still looking at purchasing vulnerable billion pounds Naval and Air Force assets which could be blown out of the sky/water by a $1000 drone outfit?
The problem with that assumption is that drones can't reach high into the sky or deep underwater or far out to sea. If they do, they become rather more expensive - missiles or submarines or long range aircraft.
What will you do when your opponent fire a ballistic missile at you?
Surface ships have been vulnerable since the First World War and that hasn't changed for the better recently as can be seen in the Black Sea.
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
Coding? Doesn't he know that AI will soon render that vocation as obsolete as leech collecting?
Is this the same AI that gets dumber every generation?
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
Change planning so things cannot be rejected. I’d remove it entirely.
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
Which is, apparently, sacred.
So was I. Personally as a regular visitor to the Northern part of the Emerald Isle I wouldn't dick about with the GFA either.
I still reject the idea that the GFA necessarily includes non-prosecution of criminals for murder, mass drug dealing, bank robberies and arson with side order of racism.
That wasn’t what we voted for. The politicians just found peace at any price the easy way forward.
EDIT: note the firebomb attack in Manchester. The Peace Process visiting the mainland?
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
If the future is an AI/ cyber war and engagement is by drones flown by a spotty Herbert in Brize Norton why are we still looking at purchasing vulnerable billion pounds Naval and Air Force assets which could be blown out of the sky/water by a $1000 drone outfit?
The problem with that assumption is that drones can't reach high into the sky or deep underwater or far out to sea. If they do, they become rather more expensive - missiles or submarines or long range aircraft.
What will you do when your opponent fire a ballistic missile at you?
Surface ships have been vulnerable since the First World War and that hasn't changed for the better recently as can be seen in the Black Sea.
Ships have been vulnerable since dugout canoes were a thing.
Everything is vulnerable. Which is why tactics and defences are required.
The Russian tactic of stoping while at sea, or proceeding in slow circles, with a point defence system that doesn't work, has proven to be a fail. Other ideas are possible
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
On the last point that doesn't solve the issue of historic back pay, because it would still need to be determined for the period up to your repelling of the law.
Also Birmingham should have sorted out single status pay back in the early 1990s when other councils did so - Swale in Kent had it sorted by 1996.
RIP David Hockney who has died aged 88. He certainly had some strong opinions on former PMs.
'In Britain, he had little sympathy for Margaret Thatcher, seeing Thatcherism as freedom for the businessman but not the artist.
He criticised her government for being anti-gay and he campaigned against Clause 28.
Not that he had any greater love for Tony Blair. Hockney detested the "cultural bossiness of New Labour" and joined the Countryside March in protest.
He reserved particular dislike for Gordon Brown - whom he condemned as a "dreary Calvinistic prig" - and hoped he would come round "so I can kick him in the balls".'
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
A government can do these things
* raise taxes (direct, indirect, etc) * lower taxes (direct, indirect, etc) * punish people (prison, fines) * help people (benefits, education) * protect people (armed forces, police, justice system) * others (which I have forgotten)
And they have to do all this whilst running several departments
Which of these is Al proposing to change? All of them are difficult and unpopular.
I had a great time in Russia when I was there for the World Cup and would love to go back to see some more of the sights. Being a Russophile doesn't mean being a Putinophile!
Russia's flaw is to be a country obsessed with the decline of its empire and also with its moment of glory in WW2. Very much a mirror to a certain country on the opposite end of Europe.
My wife and I have the Trans-Siberian Express on our lifetime bucket list. The hope is that Russia becomes a friendly country by the time we retire.
Sadly this looks some way off at the moment.
A former boss did the trans-Siberian railway. From his account, I'd recommend changing your bucket list. It's a day's entertainment spread over a week. Russia is a big place and there is an awful lot of nothing in between the interesting parts.
Something to be said for living on a small island.
Or even a large island. (GB is the 9th biggest island in the world.)
Presumably we can improve our military capabilities significantly by just buying a metric-tonne of whatever the latest Ukrainian drone technology is at the end of this war?
Not really. The drones Ukraine uses this month are improvements on those they used last month. It's all in a state of rapid evolution, somewhat analogous to the use of airplanes in WWI, except much larger scale and subject much more rapid change.
It's the domestic manufacturing capacity which we would do with building.
Aside from the issues with drones as a concept, there isa small fly in the ointment.
The cheap components for drones - motors etc - all come from China, or similar.
So if something goes wrong with imports, no drones.
So if you want a sovereign drone capability, you need either a vast stockpile of all the likely bits. Or a manufacturing capability for them.
Well, yes. Certainly Europe should have that capacity, and we should aim to be part of that.
The reality is that there isn't a vast amount the UK can do, purely on its own, in the technologies and industry essential to the future. But there's absolutely no reason Europe should not have sovereign capacity in everything from raw materials mining and production to advanced chip manufacturing and reusable space launch.
A sovereign capability on making small *cheap* electric motors is probably not sexy, though.
Or *cheap* compact, low power computer boards.
Or *cheap* small, light video cameras.
Edit: On space launch, the biggest problem is political. For decades, Government policy has been to support ESA/Ariane, and make sure that no UK firm attempts to compete with them. Variously small launcher schemes are given some minor support, but any attempt look at even the medium class is er... shot down.
Sovereign capacity doesn't mean autarky, but it does mean having sufficient capacity not to be held to ransom, as (for example) China has been able to do with rare earths (and might be about to do with solar) where they have an 80 or 90% market share.
Well, if your military capability depends on manufacturing 10,000 drones a day, *to be expended within the week* , you are going to need 40,000 electric motors a day to be able to fight
This is very different from most modern military planning - where even the ammunition is expensive and slow to make. Ammunition production is always the first target for cuts, because it isn't an obvious political point. And people say "If we have the weapon system, the ammunition can always be bought later".
I read yesterday that Patriot missile production is 50-60 per month, but each missile takes two years. It’s like they’re building aeroplanes. They can’t ramp up quickly, despite demand for thousands of them from the Mid East and Ukraine.
What amazes me about all this is that there wasn't a plan in a drawer on how to scale up production rapidly. Frankly Patriot is useless if it's not possible to produce enough interceptor missiles to shoot down China's capability to produce missiles.
The battle of the Atlantic in WW2 was won because the Americans could build ships far faster than the Germans could sink them. Capacity and numbers always count more than anything else.
In our ever more technological focus on ever more expensive kit resulting in quite embarrassingly small numbers actually making it into production we had completely lost sight of that. Cheap as chips drones are a reminder of the realities of war. Changing from the most sophisticated and technologically advanced drone/missile in the world to 10k of them a week requires a major mindset change.
It isn’t that simple. The Ukraine/Russia front is the obsession night now, but throw in directed energy weapons and high end electronic warfare to take on the drones, and you’ll be back to infantry and protected mobility in no time.
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
Which is, apparently, sacred.
What "Peace Process"?
1969 - people burnt out of their homes in Belfast
2026 - people burnt out of their homes in Belfast
Wrong
1969 - people burnt out of their homes in Belfast
2026 - Community Feedback Sessions as part of the dynamic of the Peace Process, result in reactive rehousing of certain groups.
Presumably we can improve our military capabilities significantly by just buying a metric-tonne of whatever the latest Ukrainian drone technology is at the end of this war?
Not really. The drones Ukraine uses this month are improvements on those they used last month. It's all in a state of rapid evolution, somewhat analogous to the use of airplanes in WWI, except much larger scale and subject much more rapid change.
It's the domestic manufacturing capacity which we would do with building.
Aside from the issues with drones as a concept, there isa small fly in the ointment.
The cheap components for drones - motors etc - all come from China, or similar.
So if something goes wrong with imports, no drones.
So if you want a sovereign drone capability, you need either a vast stockpile of all the likely bits. Or a manufacturing capability for them.
Well, yes. Certainly Europe should have that capacity, and we should aim to be part of that.
The reality is that there isn't a vast amount the UK can do, purely on its own, in the technologies and industry essential to the future. But there's absolutely no reason Europe should not have sovereign capacity in everything from raw materials mining and production to advanced chip manufacturing and reusable space launch.
A sovereign capability on making small *cheap* electric motors is probably not sexy, though.
Or *cheap* compact, low power computer boards.
Or *cheap* small, light video cameras.
Edit: On space launch, the biggest problem is political. For decades, Government policy has been to support ESA/Ariane, and make sure that no UK firm attempts to compete with them. Variously small launcher schemes are given some minor support, but any attempt look at even the medium class is er... shot down.
Sovereign capacity doesn't mean autarky, but it does mean having sufficient capacity not to be held to ransom, as (for example) China has been able to do with rare earths (and might be about to do with solar) where they have an 80 or 90% market share.
Well, if your military capability depends on manufacturing 10,000 drones a day, *to be expended within the week* , you are going to need 40,000 electric motors a day to be able to fight
This is very different from most modern military planning - where even the ammunition is expensive and slow to make. Ammunition production is always the first target for cuts, because it isn't an obvious political point. And people say "If we have the weapon system, the ammunition can always be bought later".
I read yesterday that Patriot missile production is 50-60 per month, but each missile takes two years. It’s like they’re building aeroplanes. They can’t ramp up quickly, despite demand for thousands of them from the Mid East and Ukraine.
What amazes me about all this is that there wasn't a plan in a drawer on how to scale up production rapidly. Frankly Patriot is useless if it's not possible to produce enough interceptor missiles to shoot down China's capability to produce missiles.
The battle of the Atlantic in WW2 was won because the Americans could build ships far faster than the Germans could sink them. Capacity and numbers always count more than anything else.
In our ever more technological focus on ever more expensive kit resulting in quite embarrassingly small numbers actually making it into production we had completely lost sight of that. Cheap as chips drones are a reminder of the realities of war. Changing from the most sophisticated and technologically advanced drone/missile in the world to 10k of them a week requires a major mindset change.
It isn’t that simple. The Ukraine/Russia front is the obsession night now, but throw in directed energy weapons and high end electronic warfare to take on the drones, and you’ll be back to infantry and protected mobility in no time.
Yes, but you will still have a choice between a very expensive directed energy weapon, of which you can afford ten, or a somewhat less advanced or bespoke model, of which you can afford a thousand.
Remember that girl in Dundee who brandished an axe and PB’s centrist dads said she was racist and the migrants she branded an axe against, in self defence, were great people and victims.
I had a great time in Russia when I was there for the World Cup and would love to go back to see some more of the sights. Being a Russophile doesn't mean being a Putinophile!
Russia's flaw is to be a country obsessed with the decline of its empire and also with its moment of glory in WW2. Very much a mirror to a certain country on the opposite end of Europe.
My wife and I have the Trans-Siberian Express on our lifetime bucket list. The hope is that Russia becomes a friendly country by the time we retire.
Sadly this looks some way off at the moment.
A former boss did the trans-Siberian railway. From his account, I'd recommend changing your bucket list. It's a day's entertainment spread over a week. Russia is a big place and there is an awful lot of nothing in between the interesting parts.
Something to be said for living on a small island.
Or even a large island. (GB is the 9th biggest island in the world.)
Does Australia count as an island, even though it's a continent?
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
Overseas aid is set to 0.48% of Gross National Income (GNI) and is reducing to 0.3%. It's peanuts. Coming out of the ECHR doesn't directly save any money. Motability ain't much (a few billion). Even small boat arrivers aren't much of the budget (a few billion, and many of those costs actually come out of the overseas aid budget, so we're in danger of double counting). Breakfast clubs is even less money. The lawsuits faced by big supermarkets don't directly generate government costs.
Basically, make all the changes you suggest and we still have to go cap in hand to the bond markets. You have to tackle the big four (NHS, pensions, working age benefits, education) to have any impact.
I had a great time in Russia when I was there for the World Cup and would love to go back to see some more of the sights. Being a Russophile doesn't mean being a Putinophile!
Russia's flaw is to be a country obsessed with the decline of its empire and also with its moment of glory in WW2. Very much a mirror to a certain country on the opposite end of Europe.
My wife and I have the Trans-Siberian Express on our lifetime bucket list. The hope is that Russia becomes a friendly country by the time we retire.
Sadly this looks some way off at the moment.
A former boss did the trans-Siberian railway. From his account, I'd recommend changing your bucket list. It's a day's entertainment spread over a week. Russia is a big place and there is an awful lot of nothing in between the interesting parts.
Something to be said for living on a small island.
Or even a large island. (GB is the 9th biggest island in the world.)
Does Australia count as an island, even though it's a continent?
I think Greenland is considered to be the largest Island.
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
Which is, apparently, sacred.
So was I. Personally as a regular visitor to the Northern part of the Emerald Isle I wouldn't dick about with the GFA either.
I still reject the idea that the GFA necessarily includes non-prosecution of criminals for murder, mass drug dealing, bank robberies and arson with side order of racism.
That wasn’t what we voted for. The politicians just found peace at any price the easy way forward.
EDIT: note the firebomb attack in Manchester. The Peace Process visiting the mainland?
Sorry, but have you gone completely loony? The Peace Process has nothing to do with the firebombing of an imam in Manchester.
I had a great time in Russia when I was there for the World Cup and would love to go back to see some more of the sights. Being a Russophile doesn't mean being a Putinophile!
Russia's flaw is to be a country obsessed with the decline of its empire and also with its moment of glory in WW2. Very much a mirror to a certain country on the opposite end of Europe.
My wife and I have the Trans-Siberian Express on our lifetime bucket list. The hope is that Russia becomes a friendly country by the time we retire.
Sadly this looks some way off at the moment.
A former boss did the trans-Siberian railway. From his account, I'd recommend changing your bucket list. It's a day's entertainment spread over a week. Russia is a big place and there is an awful lot of nothing in between the interesting parts.
Has Foxy done the Canadian transcontinental ? It appears more civilised.
As an 18 year old I took a train from Delhi to Chennai, which in those days took almost 48 hours but is faster now I would guess. It was an amazing journey, with an ever changing landscape and lots of Indian life going by outside and inside the carriage. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.
I had a great time in Russia when I was there for the World Cup and would love to go back to see some more of the sights. Being a Russophile doesn't mean being a Putinophile!
Russia's flaw is to be a country obsessed with the decline of its empire and also with its moment of glory in WW2. Very much a mirror to a certain country on the opposite end of Europe.
My wife and I have the Trans-Siberian Express on our lifetime bucket list. The hope is that Russia becomes a friendly country by the time we retire.
Sadly this looks some way off at the moment.
A former boss did the trans-Siberian railway. From his account, I'd recommend changing your bucket list. It's a day's entertainment spread over a week. Russia is a big place and there is an awful lot of nothing in between the interesting parts.
Something to be said for living on a small island.
Or even a large island. (GB is the 9th biggest island in the world.)
Does Australia count as an island, even though it's a continent?
Not in the ranking I was using, no. It's a continent. Call it an island and we slip to 10th.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
Lord Alan West (why am I reminded of Walk on the Wild side?) is an excellent argument for Members of the Lords to retire at 80.
Lord West is 78. Former First Sea Lord who had his ship sunk during the Falklands. A "fighting admiral" who is a Labour peer and made security minister by Gordon Brown. A useful person to have in the Lords, I would have thought.
Remember that girl in Dundee who brandished an axe and PB’s centrist dads said she was racist and the migrants she branded an axe against, in self defence, were great people and victims.
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
Which is, apparently, sacred.
So was I. Personally as a regular visitor to the Northern part of the Emerald Isle I wouldn't dick about with the GFA either.
I still reject the idea that the GFA necessarily includes non-prosecution of criminals for murder, mass drug dealing, bank robberies and arson with side order of racism.
That wasn’t what we voted for. The politicians just found peace at any price the easy way forward.
EDIT: note the firebomb attack in Manchester. The Peace Process visiting the mainland?
Sorry, but have you gone completely loony? The Peace Process has nothing to do with the firebombing of an imam in Manchester.
I am drawing a line between scum doing racist firebombing in Northern Ireland and scum doing racist firebombing in Manchester.
Monkey see. Monkey do.
Remember all the EDL/BNP/etc efforts to pal up with the Community Leaders in NI?
To the racist scum here, the Peace Process style is what they want. Power for them. on the streets.
The obvious counterpoint is No Ind compared to last time.
Local factors, there are always local factors.
Yes, we should focus on this one single result and ignore the the results of the May locals.
You and I campaigned for David Cameron, and I campaigned for the conservatives from the 1964 GE so I do not understand your animosity towards the conservative party of today so maybe it is fair to ask what do you want the conservative party to represent other than pro EU which is not on their agenda ?
The problems are that: a) Brexit was a deeply unserious policy that has cost the UK a significant proportion of its GDP- an estimated 140 billion directly and another 900 billion in the funds leaving the City, and with it 40,000 well paid city jobs. That is before we discuss the evisceration of our farmers and food processors and the regulatory drag for all trade with the EU- a cost that reduces our projected growth every single year. So Brexit is an economic mess, and the Uk economy is growing more fragile the longer we fail to address it. b) The advent of the Putin war and the Trump fiasco has left us militarily and strategically vulnerable, and the only viable way to maintain our strategic independence is to re-engage and indeed develop further our cooperation with NATO allies- which now includes all but 4 members of the EU- Ireland, Austria, Malta, Cyprus. Ireland,. Meanwhile Iceland is now likely to vote yes to the joining the EU in August, and this may trigger a Norwegian accession process. Even Canada is developing a much closer relationship than anything the Tories have proposed.
So the Tories need to get serious. Now.
Citation for the bit in bold? I assume in your eyes if we had stayed in our growth would have far exceeded the European average rather than just matching it, as it has done.
Brexit was a choice to be poorer as a country. Maybe it's worth it for reasons no-one seems able to articulate. No serious person would claim otherwise if they accept trade and investment are important to a country's wealth and both are reduced by barriers introduced by leaving our main market.
The ability to make our own choices in the world. People have articulated it clearly on multiple occasions. Now, you clearly don’t value that ability but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t reasons for leaving
Not my point nor the point of the poster I was replying to. A serious pro Brexit argument is that Brexit comes with economic and other costs, these costs are affordable, and are worth it for specific reasons that make sense to me. I don't have to agree with, or "value" as you put it, those reasons to accept it as a valid argument. *
An unserious Brexit argument is to pretend it makes no difference economically but we still like it
* I value my choice, now removed, not to be poorer. That definitively deals with the choice from my point of view.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
Lord Alan West (why am I reminded of Walk on the Wild side?) is an excellent argument for Members of the Lords to retire at 80.
Lord West is 78. Former First Sea Lord who had his ship sunk during the Falklands. A "fighting admiral" who is a Labour peer and made security minister by Gordon Brown. A useful person to have in the Lords, I would have thought.
I'm very familiar with Lord West.
To me these days he seems to be a classic Daily Telegraph retired Admiral, commentating from how things were several decades ago.
I'd say he is more suited for the Telegraph than the Lords.
IMO he needs to consider the the effect of free school meals, including breakfasts, on children's health and the effectiveness of their education.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
Lord Alan West (why am I reminded of Walk on the Wild side?) is an excellent argument for Members of the Lords to retire at 80.
Lord West is 78. Former First Sea Lord who had his ship sunk during the Falklands. A "fighting admiral" who is a Labour peer and made security minister by Gordon Brown. A useful person to have in the Lords, I would have thought.
I'm very familiar with Lord West.
To me these days he seems to be a classic Daily Telegraph retired Admiral, commentating from how things were several decades ago.
I'd say he is more suited for the Telegraph than the Lords.
Remember that girl in Dundee who brandished an axe and PB’s centrist dads said she was racist and the migrants she branded an axe against, in self defence, were great people and victims.
It isn’t that simple. The Ukraine/Russia front is the obsession night now, but throw in directed energy weapons and high end electronic warfare to take on the drones, and you’ll be back to infantry and protected mobility in no time.
Indeed. People who are saying we should go all-in on drones don't seem to understand we're in a period where a new weapon is highly effective because countermeasures have not been deployed at scale. Current air defence systems are designed to counter aircraft and missiles, not small slow flying drones.
All those Russian tanks died because they had no way of taking out the drones. That will not be the case in future. Similarly, Ukraine is having success with their larger, long-range drones because Russia has almost no functional air-defence network left and what little they have is protecting Putin's bunkers.
Directed energy weapons, either laser or RF, will murder drones when they become common. There's no way to protect a drone against those weapons without making it unfeasibly large and heavy.
It isn’t that simple. The Ukraine/Russia front is the obsession night now, but throw in directed energy weapons and high end electronic warfare to take on the drones, and you’ll be back to infantry and protected mobility in no time.
Indeed. People who are saying we should go all-in on drones don't seem to understand we're in a period where a new weapon is highly effective because countermeasures have not been deployed at scale. Current air defence systems are designed to counter aircraft and missiles, not small slow flying drones.
All those Russian tanks died because they had no way of taking out the drones. That will not be the case in future. Similarly, Ukraine is having success with their larger, long-range drones because Russia has almost no functional air-defence network left and what little they have is protecting Putin's bunkers.
Directed energy weapons, either laser or RF, will murder drones when they become common. There's no way to protect a drone against those weapons without making it unfeasibly large and heavy.
Neither the sword or the shield ever achieves a permanent victory in war.
It isn’t that simple. The Ukraine/Russia front is the obsession night now, but throw in directed energy weapons and high end electronic warfare to take on the drones, and you’ll be back to infantry and protected mobility in no time.
Indeed. People who are saying we should go all-in on drones don't seem to understand we're in a period where a new weapon is highly effective because countermeasures have not been deployed at scale. Current air defence systems are designed to counter aircraft and missiles, not small slow flying drones.
All those Russian tanks died because they had no way of taking out the drones. That will not be the case in future. Similarly, Ukraine is having success with their larger, long-range drones because Russia has almost no functional air-defence network left and what little they have is protecting Putin's bunkers.
Directed energy weapons, either laser or RF, will murder drones when they become common. There's no way to protect a drone against those weapons with making it unfeasibly large and heavy.
How big an area do you intend to protect with these energy weapons? At the moment they need a big power supply. It is fine if you've got a ship to protect and two turrets but covering any sort of land asset is nigh on impossible.
Drones are not slow compared to their size. A tiny drone moving at 100km/h+ low to the ground is not an easy target.
You have to stop them being launched in the first place.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
Lord Alan West (why am I reminded of Walk on the Wild side?) is an excellent argument for Members of the Lords to retire at 80.
Lord West is 78. Former First Sea Lord who had his ship sunk during the Falklands. A "fighting admiral" who is a Labour peer and made security minister by Gordon Brown. A useful person to have in the Lords, I would have thought.
I'm very familiar with Lord West.
To me these days he seems to be a classic Daily Telegraph retired Admiral, commentating from how things were several decades ago.
I'd say he is more suited for the Telegraph than the Lords.
IMO he needs to consider the the effect of free school meals, including breakfasts, on children's health and the effectiveness of their education.
Given how much we spend on education, making sure children have been fed enough so they can actually concentrate and learn is money well spent.
But that shouldn't be attached to the amount of interest we charge on student loans for those who wanted to go to university.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
Lots and lots of babies being thrown out with the bathwater in that post.
Take Motability. A scheme set up to replace the old Invacars you used to see on the gravel outfield on the corner of the Brummie Road. Unfortunately it turned into a fund for people in the know with a back twinge to get themselves a discounted Audi Q8. You can operate genuine welfare systems for people in genuine need of genuine welfare assistance if the piss is not taken.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
Lord Alan West (why am I reminded of Walk on the Wild side?) is an excellent argument for Members of the Lords to retire at 80.
Lord West is 78. Former First Sea Lord who had his ship sunk during the Falklands. A "fighting admiral" who is a Labour peer and made security minister by Gordon Brown. A useful person to have in the Lords, I would have thought.
I'm very familiar with Lord West.
To me these days he seems to be a classic Daily Telegraph retired Admiral, commentating from how things were several decades ago.
I'd say he is more suited for the Telegraph than the Lords.
IMO he needs to consider the the effect of free school meals, including breakfasts, on children's health and the effectiveness of their education.
Free school meals, in my mind, are the absolute most important thing the gov can do after defence.
Every child should have a good breakfast and lunch covered by the state as the knock on benefits to health and education would be huge.
There was an article I read the other week how a French university was making meals for students that cost €1 euro and were v healthy, nutritious and filling. Non students could pay for it for around €8.
The big problem and cost would be ensuring every school had a kitchen and grubbing hall to prep and serve the food. The other problem would be the amount of allergies and other food requirements they need to consider but still one of the most worthwhile things gov could do.
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
Which is, apparently, sacred.
So was I. Personally as a regular visitor to the Northern part of the Emerald Isle I wouldn't dick about with the GFA either.
I still reject the idea that the GFA necessarily includes non-prosecution of criminals for murder, mass drug dealing, bank robberies and arson with side order of racism.
That wasn’t what we voted for. The politicians just found peace at any price the easy way forward.
EDIT: note the firebomb attack in Manchester. The Peace Process visiting the mainland?
Sorry, but have you gone completely loony? The Peace Process has nothing to do with the firebombing of an imam in Manchester.
I am drawing a line between scum doing racist firebombing in Northern Ireland and scum doing racist firebombing in Manchester.
Monkey see. Monkey do.
Remember all the EDL/BNP/etc efforts to pal up with the Community Leaders in NI?
To the racist scum here, the Peace Process style is what they want. Power for them. on the streets.
I know. You keep repeating yourself. But it's still bonkers.
Remember that girl in Dundee who brandished an axe and PB’s centrist dads said she was racist and the migrants she branded an axe against, in self defence, were great people and victims.
I had a great time in Russia when I was there for the World Cup and would love to go back to see some more of the sights. Being a Russophile doesn't mean being a Putinophile!
Russia's flaw is to be a country obsessed with the decline of its empire and also with its moment of glory in WW2. Very much a mirror to a certain country on the opposite end of Europe.
My wife and I have the Trans-Siberian Express on our lifetime bucket list. The hope is that Russia becomes a friendly country by the time we retire.
Sadly this looks some way off at the moment.
A former boss did the trans-Siberian railway. From his account, I'd recommend changing your bucket list. It's a day's entertainment spread over a week. Russia is a big place and there is an awful lot of nothing in between the interesting parts.
Something to be said for living on a small island.
The world is full of interesting places to visit, but all too often you have to conclude that you wouldn’t want to actually live in any of them. Usually it’s too hot in summer or too cold in winter or plagued with fearsome insects or other life-threatening wildlife, and even those places that have an optimal climate, we find that either there’s a terribly corrupt local bureaucracy or the locals are off their heads on the way to crazy. We Brits thrive on a drizzly, foggy or windy day and would be unhappy anywhere that has more predictable seasons, and we could never cope anywhere where the locals didn’t understand that when we tell them that we’re in a bit of a pickle, we have actually just come through a near death experience.
I had a great time in Russia when I was there for the World Cup and would love to go back to see some more of the sights. Being a Russophile doesn't mean being a Putinophile!
Russia's flaw is to be a country obsessed with the decline of its empire and also with its moment of glory in WW2. Very much a mirror to a certain country on the opposite end of Europe.
My wife and I have the Trans-Siberian Express on our lifetime bucket list. The hope is that Russia becomes a friendly country by the time we retire.
Sadly this looks some way off at the moment.
A former boss did the trans-Siberian railway. From his account, I'd recommend changing your bucket list. It's a day's entertainment spread over a week. Russia is a big place and there is an awful lot of nothing in between the interesting parts.
Something to be said for living on a small island.
Or even a large island. (GB is the 9th biggest island in the world.)
Does Australia count as an island, even though it's a continent?
Zoom out, and we all live on an island. Zoom in, and I do, whereas you don’t.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
Lots and lots of babies being thrown out with the bathwater in that post.
Take Motability. A scheme set up to replace the old Invacars you used to see on the gravel outfield on the corner of the Brummie Road. Unfortunately it turned into a fund for people in the know with a back twinge to get themselves a discounted Audi Q8. You can operate genuine welfare systems for people in genuine need of genuine welfare assistance if the piss is not taken.
Welfare works within a community where you know who you are helping and what their circumstances are.
It doesn't really work as a pile of money from which you take if you can get past a guardian (who doesn't really care that much about you or the provider of the money).
If the motives of some in kicking up all this shit over defence is to spike Burnham's chances of taking over it's paying dividends. Reform were 7.8 for the by-election. They are now 4.5. Well done you self-inflating smarties. Good job.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
Lord Alan West (why am I reminded of Walk on the Wild side?) is an excellent argument for Members of the Lords to retire at 80.
Lord West is 78. Former First Sea Lord who had his ship sunk during the Falklands. A "fighting admiral" who is a Labour peer and made security minister by Gordon Brown. A useful person to have in the Lords, I would have thought.
I'm very familiar with Lord West.
To me these days he seems to be a classic Daily Telegraph retired Admiral, commentating from how things were several decades ago.
I'd say he is more suited for the Telegraph than the Lords.
IMO he needs to consider the the effect of free school meals, including breakfasts, on children's health and the effectiveness of their education.
Given how much we spend on education, making sure children have been fed enough so they can actually concentrate and learn is money well spent.
But that shouldn't be attached to the amount of interest we charge on student loans for those who wanted to go to university.
Lord West could look a lot closer to "work" for reductions in meal subsidies
Whereas those sensible children want 60% of ministers making sensible decisions in the national interest, regardless of political bias or career self-interest, by 2035, if not right now?
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
Lord Alan West (why am I reminded of Walk on the Wild side?) is an excellent argument for Members of the Lords to retire at 80.
Lord West is 78. Former First Sea Lord who had his ship sunk during the Falklands. A "fighting admiral" who is a Labour peer and made security minister by Gordon Brown. A useful person to have in the Lords, I would have thought.
And utterly out of touch with current warfare, apparently.
If the motives of some in kicking up all this shit over defence is to spike Burnham's chances of taking over it's paying dividends. Reform were 7.8 for the by-election. They are now 4.5. Well done you self-inflating smarties. Good job.
Doesn't that have more to do with the lacklustre private polling?
If the motives of some in kicking up all this shit over defence is to spike Burnham's chances of taking over it's paying dividends. Reform were 7.8 for the by-election. They are now 4.5. Well done you self-inflating smarties. Good job.
Doesn't that have more to do with the lacklustre private polling?
One can't know really. It's a reflection of general punter sentiment. But I'd have thought this squabbling is doing Labour no favours.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
Lord Alan West (why am I reminded of Walk on the Wild side?) is an excellent argument for Members of the Lords to retire at 80.
Lord West is 78. Former First Sea Lord who had his ship sunk during the Falklands. A "fighting admiral" who is a Labour peer and made security minister by Gordon Brown. A useful person to have in the Lords, I would have thought.
I'm very familiar with Lord West.
To me these days he seems to be a classic Daily Telegraph retired Admiral, commentating from how things were several decades ago.
I'd say he is more suited for the Telegraph than the Lords.
Playing the man not the ball.
His argument is demonstrably bollocks, too, since there the funding shortfall for defence, and the money for free school breakfasts are of a different order of magnitude - and the latter is in any event being paid for by the excess interest rate charged on student loans, as a Treasury Minister told the Commons the other day.
To give him his due, he did oppose defence cuts under the last Labour government, nearly twenty years ago,
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
Lord Alan West (why am I reminded of Walk on the Wild side?) is an excellent argument for Members of the Lords to retire at 80.
Lord West is 78. Former First Sea Lord who had his ship sunk during the Falklands. A "fighting admiral" who is a Labour peer and made security minister by Gordon Brown. A useful person to have in the Lords, I would have thought.
I'm very familiar with Lord West.
To me these days he seems to be a classic Daily Telegraph retired Admiral, commentating from how things were several decades ago.
I'd say he is more suited for the Telegraph than the Lords.
IMO he needs to consider the the effect of free school meals, including breakfasts, on children's health and the effectiveness of their education.
Given how much we spend on education, making sure children have been fed enough so they can actually concentrate and learn is money well spent.
But that shouldn't be attached to the amount of interest we charge on student loans for those who wanted to go to university.
Yes - I agree.
Perhaps we should fund it by means testing state pensions for those with incomes over perhaps 80k or 100k.
RIP David Hockney who has died aged 88. He certainly had some strong opinions on former PMs.
'In Britain, he had little sympathy for Margaret Thatcher, seeing Thatcherism as freedom for the businessman but not the artist.
He criticised her government for being anti-gay and he campaigned against Clause 28.
Not that he had any greater love for Tony Blair. Hockney detested the "cultural bossiness of New Labour" and joined the Countryside March in protest.
He reserved particular dislike for Gordon Brown - whom he condemned as a "dreary Calvinistic prig" - and hoped he would come round "so I can kick him in the balls".'
If the motives of some in kicking up all this shit over defence is to spike Burnham's chances of taking over it's paying dividends. Reform were 7.8 for the by-election. They are now 4.5. Well done you self-inflating smarties. Good job.
All a bit ironic when one considers Farage protege Nathan Gill's back story, oh and Farage claiming Putin was something on the lines of the most impressive leader.
Anyway there are a couple of additional runners and riders since yesterday should Burnham fail.
Why? How? How much does this cost? Is there a real need for this change? We cannot afford the things we already do. Doing more things is not good.
Ministers don't want this. The anti-car lobby in the Civil Service want this. There are many of them at national and local level who are pushing this dogmatic agenda.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
The list of pet hates to fund defence continues to grow. About £30 billion per annum gets us to 3% of GDP.
Breakfast clubs: £0.3 billion, enables those raising future soldiers to get to work
Overseas aid: £10 billion, mainly stuff that keeps us safe like disease monitoring, humanitarian etc etc
Active travel: £0.2 billion, stops us being a nation of sedentary fatties unable to run 5K or pick up a rifle
Motability : £1 billion, already largely cut
Leave the ECHR: ?
Rwanda scheme: actually costs money
Net Zero CfD contracts: saved us £4 billion in costs during Ukraine invasion, versus £50 billion subsiding fossil fuels (would have saved us well over £20 billion if the whole grid was based on them).
Beaver reintroduction: £2.55
Triple lock: possibly nothing if inflation picks up
It isn’t that simple. The Ukraine/Russia front is the obsession night now, but throw in directed energy weapons and high end electronic warfare to take on the drones, and you’ll be back to infantry and protected mobility in no time.
Indeed. People who are saying we should go all-in on drones don't seem to understand we're in a period where a new weapon is highly effective because countermeasures have not been deployed at scale. Current air defence systems are designed to counter aircraft and missiles, not small slow flying drones.
All those Russian tanks died because they had no way of taking out the drones. That will not be the case in future. Similarly, Ukraine is having success with their larger, long-range drones because Russia has almost no functional air-defence network left and what little they have is protecting Putin's bunkers.
Directed energy weapons, either laser or RF, will murder drones when they become common. There's no way to protect a drone against those weapons with making it unfeasibly large and heavy.
How big an area do you intend to protect with these energy weapons? At the moment they need a big power supply. It is fine if you've got a ship to protect and two turrets but covering any sort of land asset is nigh on impossible.
Drones are not slow compared to their size. A tiny drone moving at 100km/h+ low to the ground is not an easy target.
You have to stop them being launched in the first place.
100kmph is a snails pace to an automated point defence system. Existing cannon based systems can hit supersonic sea skimmers moving at 1000kmph+.
A laser system won't have to worry about projectile velocity, trajectory or leading the target.
Why? How? How much does this cost? Is there a real need for this change? We cannot afford the things we already do. Doing more things is not good.
Ministers don't want this. The anti-car lobby in the Civil Service want this. There are many of them at national and local level who are pushing this dogmatic agenda.
They are all stick and no carrot.
Go back 50 years and it was more like 90% of course.
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
The list of pet hates to fund defence continues to grow. About £30 billion per annum gets us to 3% of GDP.
Breakfast clubs: £0.3 billion, enables those raising future soldiers to get to work
Overseas aid: £10 billion, mainly stuff that keeps us safe like disease monitoring, humanitarian etc...
On the latter score, this has aged well from last summer in the US:
A government agency spending $300 million in taxpayer dollars to produce sterilized flies* sounds like a dream scenario for a DOGE team looking to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. https://x.com/NEWSMAX/status/1937470443168182386
*sterilised screwworm flies used for rapid response eradication.
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
Which is, apparently, sacred.
So was I. Personally as a regular visitor to the Northern part of the Emerald Isle I wouldn't dick about with the GFA either.
I still reject the idea that the GFA necessarily includes non-prosecution of criminals for murder, mass drug dealing, bank robberies and arson with side order of racism.
That wasn’t what we voted for. The politicians just found peace at any price the easy way forward.
EDIT: note the firebomb attack in Manchester. The Peace Process visiting the mainland?
Sorry, but have you gone completely loony? The Peace Process has nothing to do with the firebombing of an imam in Manchester.
I am drawing a line between scum doing racist firebombing in Northern Ireland and scum doing racist firebombing in Manchester.
Monkey see. Monkey do.
Remember all the EDL/BNP/etc efforts to pal up with the Community Leaders in NI?
To the racist scum here, the Peace Process style is what they want. Power for them. on the streets.
I know. You keep repeating yourself. But it's still bonkers.
It's not bonkers to state that the Community Leaders have been given qualified immunity to Carry On Being Criminal. They have.
It's not bonkers to point out that this now includes ethnic cleansing. It does
It's not bonkers to point out the frequent attempts by the extreme right, in the UK, to join up with the Ulster paramilitaries. See stories in the Guardian and BBC.
If you let the scum be scum, you get scummy behaviour.
That should actually be a fairly straightforward target to meet, since our schools tend to have geographical catchment, and we already have places that aiui meet the target eg Portsmouth.
I'd argue we should also use it as an opportunity to improve and expand our public footpath network.
The defence investment plan will no longer be published on Monday as planned, raising questions about where Dan Jarvis stands on the plan. Will be very awkward for Jarvis heading to NATO defence ministerials next week https://x.com/larisamlbrown/status/2065382271658451104
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
The list of pet hates to fund defence continues to grow. About £30 billion per annum gets us to 3% of GDP.
Breakfast clubs: £0.3 billion, enables those raising future soldiers to get to work
Overseas aid: £10 billion, mainly stuff that keeps us safe like disease monitoring, humanitarian etc etc
Active travel: £0.2 billion, stops us being a nation of sedentary fatties unable to run 5K or pick up a rifle
Motability : £1 billion, already largely cut
Leave the ECHR: ?
Rwanda scheme: actually costs money
Net Zero CfD contracts: saved us £4 billion in costs during Ukraine invasion, versus £50 billion subsiding fossil fuels (would have saved us well over £20 billion if the whole grid was based on them).
Beaver reintroduction: £2.55
Triple lock: possibly nothing if inflation picks up
The King: £0.07 Billion
Have I missed anything? Happy to keep a log.
It was a very comprehensive list of things I would hate if I were a Tory.
And in the next Tory breath we might have how Labour and the unions have left the white poor underclass to struggle manfully, and in the breath after that, let's take the benefits off the lazy bastards.
That should actually be a fairly straightforward target to meet, since our schools tend to have geographical catchment, and we already have places that aiui meet the target eg Portsmouth.
I'd argue we should also use it as an opportunity to improve and expand our public footpath network.
I would be interested to see new urban designs (for new towns) that have vehicle, footpaths and cycle lanes segregated from each other.
I saw a design the other day - with road (in the style of the old coal lanes) at the bottom of back gardens (with garages/car standing on the plots, not in the road), and the front gardens opening onto pavements with cycle lanes between them.
The defence investment plan will no longer be published on Monday as planned, raising questions about where Dan Jarvis stands on the plan. Will be very awkward for Jarvis heading to NATO defence ministerials next week https://x.com/larisamlbrown/status/2065382271658451104
For the love of God man, go!
Starmer has reached Johnsonian levels of Prime Ministerial comedy. OK, not the venal corruption but the incalculable incompetence.
Should be higher than that. I walked and cycled to school. My kids walked/walk to school. It's good exercise and will help to reduce the number of overweight/obese kids, who will become overweight/obese adults and cost the NHS £billions.
That should actually be a fairly straightforward target to meet, since our schools tend to have geographical catchment, and we already have places that aiui meet the target eg Portsmouth.
I'd argue we should also use it as an opportunity to improve and expand our public footpath network.
I would be interested to see new urban designs (for new towns) that have vehicle, footpaths and cycle lanes segregated from each other.
I saw a design the other day - with road (in the style of the old coal lanes) at the bottom of back gardens (with garages/car standing on the plots, not in the road), and the front gardens opening onto pavements with cycle lanes between them.
Lots of places adopt similar principles, or some similar principles - such as "Span" estates from the 1950s to the 1970s of which there are some around London. It separates modes and creates a different mix of compromises.
So much of it is about imagination, and taking off our existing cultural spectacles to see alternatives.
Here there's a 2500 pupil secondary Academy near me where they have around 4-5% cycling, but they could perhaps save 1000 vehicle movements per day if the Local Highways Authority would create a 120m segment of public footpath and the school open their campus back gate twice a day, to help the 1/3 of the catchment on the other side of the bypass. A network of excellent paths and a bridge already exist.
Instead Councillors have been wibbling on for years and years about multi-million pound "link roads", rather than being straightforward, practical and sensible and taking the easy option of reducing traffic.
I admit I have not yet tried engaging Ref UK Councillors on this one.
The obvious counterpoint is No Ind compared to last time.
Local factors, there are always local factors.
Yes, we should focus on this one single result and ignore the the results of the May locals.
You and I campaigned for David Cameron, and I campaigned for the conservatives from the 1964 GE so I do not understand your animosity towards the conservative party of today so maybe it is fair to ask what do you want the conservative party to represent other than pro EU which is not on their agenda ?
I would suggest being liberal on social and cultural issues.
Social conservatism is almost always a euphemism for bigotry.
Then that is the liberal party
Yes, if voters want a socially liberal party they will vote LD, if voters want a socially conservative, anti immigration party they will vote Reform or Restore. If voters want a statist, big government party, they will vote Labour or Green.
If voters want to rejoin the EU they will vote LD or Green, if they are staunch Leavers they will vote Reform or Restore.
The Tories need to be a distinct centre right party, low tax and small state without being pure laissez-faire, backing choice in public services, socially moderate but not uber liberal or uber socially conservative and white nationalist either. Accepting of Brexit but with the trade deal with the EU and for controlled immigration but not being for deportation of migrants like Restore or removing even those with indefinite leave to Remain like Reform
Good we are on the same page
I don't believe HYUFD has agreed with Badenoch that propping up a Farage Government from a position of inevitable weakness would be optimal.
The obvious counterpoint is No Ind compared to last time.
Local factors, there are always local factors.
Yes, we should focus on this one single result and ignore the the results of the May locals.
You and I campaigned for David Cameron, and I campaigned for the conservatives from the 1964 GE so I do not understand your animosity towards the conservative party of today so maybe it is fair to ask what do you want the conservative party to represent other than pro EU which is not on their agenda ?
I would suggest being liberal on social and cultural issues.
Social conservatism is almost always a euphemism for bigotry.
Then that is the liberal party
Yes, if voters want a socially liberal party they will vote LD, if voters want a socially conservative, anti immigration party they will vote Reform or Restore. If voters want a statist, big government party, they will vote Labour or Green.
If voters want to rejoin the EU they will vote LD or Green, if they are staunch Leavers they will vote Reform or Restore.
The Tories need to be a distinct centre right party, low tax and small state without being pure laissez-faire, backing choice in public services, socially moderate but not uber liberal or uber socially conservative and white nationalist either. Accepting of Brexit but with the trade deal with the EU and for controlled immigration but not being for deportation of migrants like Restore or removing even those with indefinite leave to Remain like Reform
Good we are on the same page
I don't believe HYUFD has agreed with Badenoch that propping up a Farage Government from a position of inevitable weakness would be optimal.
That should actually be a fairly straightforward target to meet, since our schools tend to have geographical catchment, and we already have places that aiui meet the target eg Portsmouth.
I'd argue we should also use it as an opportunity to improve and expand our public footpath network.
I would be interested to see new urban designs (for new towns) that have vehicle, footpaths and cycle lanes segregated from each other.
I saw a design the other day - with road (in the style of the old coal lanes) at the bottom of back gardens (with garages/car standing on the plots, not in the road), and the front gardens opening onto pavements with cycle lanes between them.
Lots of places adopt similar principles, or some similar principles - such as "Span" estates from the 1950s to the 1970s of which there are some around London. It separates modes and creates a different mix of compromises.
So much of it is about imagination, and taking off our existing cultural spectacles to see alternatives.
Here there's a 2500 pupil secondary Academy near me where they have around 4-5% cycling, but they could perhaps save 1000 vehicle movements per day if the Local Highways Authority would create a 120m segment of public footpath and the school open their campus back gate twice a day, to help the 1/3 of the catchment on the other side of the bypass. A network of excellent paths and a bridge already exist.
Instead Councillors have been wibbling on for years and years about multi-million pound "link roads", rather than being straightforward, practical and sensible and taking the easy option of reducing traffic.
I admit I have not yet tried engaging Ref UK Councillors on this one.
I see that, as usual, we fucked it up in this country. My mother-in-law had a house on one such estate in Epping, where they made access by all vehicle forms problematic and created a maze of walkways and entries with lots of dark corners.
"Copied from this afternoon's article in The Times:-
I spoke to, or tried to speak to, 20 voters across the constituency. Of those, seven did not know an election was taking place. That figure includes two people, aged 18 and 21, who did not know what an election was. The 18-year-old, a support worker in an assisted living facility, at the wheel of a Skoda which had swerved dangerously across the street to ask me what I was up to, writing in a notebook and all, asked me in all seriousness whether he was allowed to vote. He asked: “I haven’t got a credit rating or anything, y’know?” I told him that didn’t matter. He was delighted. “I pay £400 a month for this car,” he confided, gesturing at a fixed penalty notice on the dashboard, “I’ll vote for anyone who lets me park where I want.”"
It’s either breakfasts for poor kids or stopping the Russkis shooting them. At least Colonel Blimp was a sensitive, honourable man capable of change underneath the reactionary old fool, whereas this guy..
Lord Alan West: "Its all very well having nice spending for breakfast for children at school.. but if that means.. you have Russians stomping down your streets shooting the children who would have been having breakfast.."
Russians killing your kids. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?
Rachel and Sir Keir slashed that in half, but now it's breakfast clubs that are the problem. What gives?
All of it is unnecessary, especially whilst we run a budget deficit and have to go cap in hand to the bond markets to fund spending.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
The list of pet hates to fund defence continues to grow. About £30 billion per annum gets us to 3% of GDP.
Breakfast clubs: £0.3 billion, enables those raising future soldiers to get to work
Overseas aid: £10 billion, mainly stuff that keeps us safe like disease monitoring, humanitarian etc etc
Active travel: £0.2 billion, stops us being a nation of sedentary fatties unable to run 5K or pick up a rifle
Motability : £1 billion, already largely cut
Leave the ECHR: ?
Rwanda scheme: actually costs money
Net Zero CfD contracts: saved us £4 billion in costs during Ukraine invasion, versus £50 billion subsiding fossil fuels (would have saved us well over £20 billion if the whole grid was based on them).
Beaver reintroduction: £2.55
Triple lock: possibly nothing if inflation picks up
Comments
In our ever more technological focus on ever more expensive kit resulting in quite embarrassingly small numbers actually making it into production we had completely lost sight of that. Cheap as chips drones are a reminder of the realities of war. Changing from the most sophisticated and technologically advanced drone/missile in the world to 10k of them a week requires a major mindset change.
https://x.com/alistaircarns/status/2065386438955348361
The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.
It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.
Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.
We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.
Text here - https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v002n04_1951-08_AK/page/n3/mode/2up
Which is, apparently, sacred.
In the real world, LLMs can code as a team of juniors working for an overseeing developer.
* We already know that is not true for Donald Trump.
What will you do when your opponent fire a ballistic missile at you?
It appears more civilised.
Scrap overseas aid. Scrap taxpayer funded breakfasts. Scrap motability. Stop blocking roads in the same of sodding active travel. Come out of ECHR. Get rid of the laws that have left us vulnerable to being sued by activist lawyers. Insist that anyone who arrives here on a small boat gets processed elsewhere. Get rid of the laws that lead to lawsuits faced by Brum council and now big supermarkets.
That wasn’t what we voted for. The politicians just found peace at any price the easy way forward.
EDIT: note the firebomb attack in Manchester. The Peace Process visiting the mainland?
Everything is vulnerable. Which is why tactics and defences are required.
The Russian tactic of stoping while at sea, or proceeding in slow circles, with a point defence system that doesn't work, has proven to be a fail. Other ideas are possible
Also Birmingham should have sorted out single status pay back in the early 1990s when other councils did so - Swale in Kent had it sorted by 1996.
'In Britain, he had little sympathy for Margaret Thatcher, seeing Thatcherism as freedom for the businessman but not the artist.
He criticised her government for being anti-gay and he campaigned against Clause 28.
Not that he had any greater love for Tony Blair. Hockney detested the "cultural bossiness of New Labour" and joined the Countryside March in protest.
He reserved particular dislike for Gordon Brown - whom he condemned as a "dreary Calvinistic prig" - and hoped he would come round "so I can kick him in the balls".'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck77rg88gd9o
* raise taxes (direct, indirect, etc)
* lower taxes (direct, indirect, etc)
* punish people (prison, fines)
* help people (benefits, education)
* protect people (armed forces, police, justice system)
* others (which I have forgotten)
And they have to do all this whilst running several departments
Which of these is Al proposing to change? All of them are difficult and unpopular.
1969 - people burnt out of their homes in Belfast
2026 - people burnt out of their homes in Belfast
1969 - people burnt out of their homes in Belfast
2026 - Community Feedback Sessions as part of the dynamic of the Peace Process, result in reactive rehousing of certain groups.
Which they get anyway.
Well……..
https://x.com/redrumlisa/status/2065383552003268951?s=61
Basically, make all the changes you suggest and we still have to go cap in hand to the bond markets. You have to tackle the big four (NHS, pensions, working age benefits, education) to have any impact.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/06/12/keir-starmer-latest-defence-reeves-spending-resign-healey/
https://x.com/bindelj/status/2065365865302736905
Julie Bindel
@bindelj
I got this one wrong.
Monkey see. Monkey do.
Remember all the EDL/BNP/etc efforts to pal up with the Community Leaders in NI?
To the racist scum here, the Peace Process style is what they want. Power for them. on the streets.
An unserious Brexit argument is to pretend it makes no difference economically but we still like it
* I value my choice, now removed, not to be poorer. That definitively deals with the choice from my point of view.
To me these days he seems to be a classic Daily Telegraph retired Admiral, commentating from how things were several decades ago.
I'd say he is more suited for the Telegraph than the Lords.
IMO he needs to consider the the effect of free school meals, including breakfasts, on children's health and the effectiveness of their education.
All those Russian tanks died because they had no way of taking out the drones. That will not be the case in future. Similarly, Ukraine is having success with their larger, long-range drones because Russia has almost no functional air-defence network left and what little they have is protecting Putin's bunkers.
Directed energy weapons, either laser or RF, will murder drones when they become common. There's no way to protect a drone against those weapons without making it unfeasibly large and heavy.
Drones are not slow compared to their size. A tiny drone moving at 100km/h+ low to the ground is not an easy target.
You have to stop them being launched in the first place.
But that shouldn't be attached to the amount of interest we charge on student loans for those who wanted to go to university.
Take Motability. A scheme set up to replace the old Invacars you used to see on the gravel outfield on the corner of the Brummie Road. Unfortunately it turned into a fund for people in the know with a back twinge to get themselves a discounted Audi Q8. You can operate genuine welfare systems for people in genuine need of genuine welfare assistance if the piss is not taken.
Every child should have a good breakfast and lunch covered by the state as the knock on benefits to health and education would be huge.
There was an article I read the other week how a French university was making meals for students that cost €1 euro and were v healthy, nutritious and filling. Non students could pay for it for around €8.
The big problem and cost would be ensuring every school had a kitchen and grubbing hall to prep and serve the food. The other problem would be the amount of allergies and other food requirements they need to consider but still one of the most worthwhile things gov could do.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3wyezwly69o
It doesn't really work as a pile of money from which you take if you can get past a guardian (who doesn't really care that much about you or the provider of the money).
To give him his due, he did oppose defence cuts under the last Labour government, nearly twenty years ago,
Perhaps we should fund it by means testing state pensions for those with incomes over perhaps 80k or 100k.
Anyway there are a couple of additional runners and riders since yesterday should Burnham fail.
They are all stick and no carrot.
Breakfast clubs: £0.3 billion, enables those raising future soldiers to get to work
Overseas aid: £10 billion, mainly stuff that keeps us safe like disease monitoring, humanitarian etc etc
Active travel: £0.2 billion, stops us being a nation of sedentary fatties unable to run 5K or pick up a rifle
Motability : £1 billion, already largely cut
Leave the ECHR: ?
Rwanda scheme: actually costs money
Net Zero CfD contracts: saved us £4 billion in costs during Ukraine invasion, versus £50 billion subsiding fossil fuels (would have saved us well over £20 billion if the whole grid was based on them).
Beaver reintroduction: £2.55
Triple lock: possibly nothing if inflation picks up
The King: £0.07 Billion
Have I missed anything? Happy to keep a log.
A laser system won't have to worry about projectile velocity, trajectory or leading the target.
A government agency spending $300 million in taxpayer dollars to produce sterilized flies* sounds like a dream scenario for a DOGE team looking to cut waste, fraud, and abuse.
https://x.com/NEWSMAX/status/1937470443168182386
*sterilised screwworm flies used for rapid response eradication.
Peter.
It's not bonkers to point out that this now includes ethnic cleansing. It does
It's not bonkers to point out the frequent attempts by the extreme right, in the UK, to join up with the Ulster paramilitaries. See stories in the Guardian and BBC.
If you let the scum be scum, you get scummy behaviour.
I'd argue we should also use it as an opportunity to improve and expand our public footpath network.
The defence investment plan will no longer be published on Monday as planned, raising questions about where Dan Jarvis stands on the plan. Will be very awkward for Jarvis heading to NATO defence ministerials next week
https://x.com/larisamlbrown/status/2065382271658451104
And in the next Tory breath we might have how Labour and the unions have left the white poor underclass to struggle manfully, and in the breath after that, let's take the benefits off the lazy bastards.
I saw a design the other day - with road (in the style of the old coal lanes) at the bottom of back gardens (with garages/car standing on the plots, not in the road), and the front gardens opening onto pavements with cycle lanes between them.
https://bsky.app/profile/jayrayner1.bsky.social/post/3mo3vgtfxks22
Starmer has reached Johnsonian levels of Prime Ministerial comedy. OK, not the venal corruption but the incalculable incompetence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radburn_design_housing
Lots of places adopt similar principles, or some similar principles - such as "Span" estates from the 1950s to the 1970s of which there are some around London. It separates modes and creates a different mix of compromises.
So much of it is about imagination, and taking off our existing cultural spectacles to see alternatives.
Here there's a 2500 pupil secondary Academy near me where they have around 4-5% cycling, but they could perhaps save 1000 vehicle movements per day if the Local Highways Authority would create a 120m segment of public footpath and the school open their campus back gate twice a day, to help the 1/3 of the catchment on the other side of the bypass. A network of excellent paths and a bridge already exist.
Instead Councillors have been wibbling on for years and years about multi-million pound "link roads", rather than being straightforward, practical and sensible and taking the easy option of reducing traffic.
I admit I have not yet tried engaging Ref UK Councillors on this one.
Kemi will be ahead of Reform by GE 29
What's going on with these double postings?
"Copied from this afternoon's article in The Times:-
I spoke to, or tried to speak to, 20 voters across the constituency. Of those, seven did not know an election was taking place. That figure includes two people, aged 18 and 21, who did not know what an election was. The 18-year-old, a support worker in an assisted living facility, at the wheel of a Skoda which had swerved dangerously across the street to ask me what I was up to, writing in a notebook and all, asked me in all seriousness whether he was allowed to vote. He asked: “I haven’t got a credit rating or anything, y’know?” I told him that didn’t matter. He was delighted. “I pay £400 a month for this car,” he confided, gesturing at a fixed penalty notice on the dashboard, “I’ll vote for anyone who lets me park where I want.”"
https://vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/19953/makerfield?page=93